Collecting historic newspapers a popular, affordable hobby

With the possible sight of The Tucson Citizen in our rearview mirror, several people have asked if the final issues of newspapers are worth saving.

Strolling through the newspaper cemetery is startling. Some of America’s most historic papers have folded in recent years and even more are barely alive and on life support. Gone are such proud old publications as the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, the San Francisco Herald, The Miami News, the Chicago Daily News, the New Orleans States-Item, The Baltimore Evening Sun, The Kansas City Star, the St. Louis-Globe Democrat, the Houston Post, The Albuquerque Tribune, and the New York Herald Tribune. In recent weeks, we’ve witnessed the demise of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News and heard the death rattle of the San Francisco Chronicle and Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Are any of the final editions of these papers worth more than just a dollar or two and is a newspaper with historic headlines worth collecting? To find out the answer, I monitored online auctions and contacted several collectors and experts. Some final issues, such as the last edition of the Rocky Mountain News, are almost certain to increase in value because of their content and the overall historic value of the publication. I saw several issues sell on eBay in the $15-$20 range.

According to one collector, most older editions of newspapers, even when packed away for decades, rarely sell for more than $25. There are, of course, exceptions. For example, the farewell issue of The Washington Daily News from 1972 routinely sells for $40. Other popular papers that are highly collectible include Leslie’s Illustrated account of the Chicago Fire, Oct. 28, 1871, $250; Chicago Tribune from April 5, 1882, with story of Jesse James murder, $650; Columbian Centinel’s War of 1812 issue, $65; the New York Herald’s Lincoln election issue, $150; and Lincoln’s assassination from almost any New York or Washington paper, $150 and up.

Other historic events that are highly collectible include the Civil War, presidential elections and deaths, the sinking of the Titanic, the stock market collapse in 1929, and the death of Elvis Presley in 1977.

Papers should be placed flat and stored in a dark, dry place. Cedar chests are ideal. Never keep older paper items in plastic of any kind.

It’s wicker season and this vintage planter is $45 at Marche Noir Interiors, 2229 N. Country Club Road.

Our Digital Archive

This blog page archives the entire digital archive of the Tucson Citizen from 1993 to 2009. It was gleaned from a database that was not intended to be displayed as a public web archive. Therefore, some of the text in some stories displays a little oddly. Also, this database did not contain any links to photos, so though the archive contains numerous captions for photos, there are no links to any of those photos.

There are more than 230,000 articles in this archive.

In TucsonCitizen.com Morgue, Part 1, we have preserved the Tucson Citizen newspaper's web archive from 2006 to 2009. To view those stories (all of which are duplicated here) go to Morgue Part 1